Saturday, December 16, 2006

Segolene starts national debate

French Socialist and presidential candidate Segolene Royal launched what is being termed her "campagne participative", in order to build proposals and policy positions for the socialist platform in 2007. Royal said she wanted debate at "all levels... in a district, a street, a bar, an appartment." She had been accused of peddling with populist rhetoric during her primary campaign, although it appears now that she will continue acting in this manner:

"The idea will be to say in the final analysis: 'my presidential project, I built it with Français'...In the debates which I will have against the line, I will be carrying not something which will have been born in my brain or which will have only left the project of the Socialists, but I will have something which will have been born from the movement of the French.

Royal was also careful not to trivialize the process as a nothing but a political farce:

"This work is a serious work, it is not a trick in the air, it is something which will oblige us. From the moment when we make this effort, that will want to say that tomorrow also, when we control, we will make the same effort of serious and attention."